Sheila Atim

Atim presented her first play as an author, Anguis, at the 2019 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It features Cleopatra being interviewed by a scientist and singing, Atim also having composed the songs. The Times considered it to be and "intriguing look at female power … that marks [Atim] as a playwright to watch", whereas The Scotsman, whilst praising the songs and some performances, lamented that "the stories of the hugely privileged queen and the stressed-out modern black Londoner never quite come together as strongly as the situation promises."

Atim played playing Viola and Sebastian in a film of Twelfth Night, and won the Screen Nation 2019 Best Female Performance in Film award. In 2018 she portrayed Limehouse Nell in ITV's Harlots.

Atim plays piano, violin, bass and drums. She composed the score for the play Time Is Love at London's Finborough Theatre in 2019,, the year that she was named as one of the cast of the Game of Thrones prequel series Bloodmoon. The planned series was cancelled following the pilot episode. She appeared as an alleged witch in the 2020 BBC adaptation of Agatha Christie's The Pale Horse and was cast in The Underground Railroad, and in early 2020 was working on The Underground Railroad, The Irregulars and Bruised.

In June 2019 Atim was awarded an MBE for services to drama and she is a member of The Old Vic Theatre Trust Board of Trustees.

In 2018, she played Emilia opposite Mark Rylance's Iago in Othello at Shakespeares's Globe, where according to The Independent, "she unleashed a fury that blew the greatest actor of his generation off the stage."

She played Marianne Laine in the original run of the musical Girl from the North Country at The Old Vic in London from 26 July to 7 October 2017. Following the success of The Old Vic production, it transferred into London's West End at the Noël Coward Theatre from 29 December 2017 for a limited 12-week run until 24 March 2018. The play is set during the Great Depression and Atim's character Marianne Laine is a black woman, who was adopted by a white couple that run a struggling guesthouse. The character is a pregnant and appears to have been forsaken by the father of her unborn child. The music for the show consists of songs by Bob Dylan and amongst the numbers that Atim performs are his "Tight Connection to My Heart (Has Anybody Seen My Love)" and "Idiot Wind". The Guardian described Atim as "outstanding" in the role, with delivery of "Tight Connection to My Heart (Has Anybody Seen My Love)" being "direct, unaffected and perfectly poised" and her performance of "Idiot Wind" a "beautiful reading." The Times stated that "Atim, in a strong cast, is standout." For her Girl from the North Country role, she received a nomination for Best Supporting Actress in a Play at the 18th WhatsOnStage awards and won the Olivier award for Best Supporting Actress in a Musical.

Her first major stage role was the non-speaking part of The Woman in Les Blancs at the National Theatre in 2016. The Stage said of her performance that "at the centre of the narrative is its most potent character: a gaunt, stooped and silent woman." The New York Times described a "spine-tingling production" and suggested that Atim's character may be an emblem of Africa. The Times later referred to her performance as "mesmerising."

Atim received acclaim for her 2016 performances in the Donmar Warehouse's all-female Shakespeare trilogy set in a women's prison, when she played Ferdinand in The Tempest, Gadshill and Lady Percy in Henry IV, and Lucius in Julius Caesar. The Guardian said Atim was "a glorious, giddy Ferdinand and a moving Lady Percy – [and] frequently seems to be physically stabbing the text as much as speaking it" and The Independent wrote "Sheila Atim (Ferdinand) and Leah Harvey (Miranda) are adorably funny and charming as they capture the giddy gaucheries of first love." Atim won a 2018 Clarence Derwent Award, presented to best supporting actors in London productions, for her roles The Tempest and Les Blancs.

Atim graduated in biomedical science from King's College London and trained as an actor at the Weekend Arts Centre, Belsize Park, London. She got involved in a workshop for a new play, The Lightning Child, which led to her being cast by her acting teacher Ché Walker for her professional acting debut at Shakespeare's Globe in 2013.

The Lightning Child, written by Walker and Arthur Darvill, ran for several weeks from mid-September 2013, and was the first musical staged at the Shakespeare's Globe. It received mixed reviews, with The Financial Times describing it as "a bold experiment, but sadly not a successful one" and The Guardian review calling it "oddly conventional and pointlessly excessive." The Independent said that despite the production being overlong and having problems with the structure, it was "hard not to like" the show.

Atim played Keira, a physical embodiment of obsessive–compulsive disorder, in Ghost Town at the York Theatre Royal in early 2014. What's On Stage praised her "mesmeric physical presence" whilst The Yorkshire Times review said that Atim "dominated the stage." Following this, Atim appeared with Ako Mitchell in Walker's two-hander Klook's Last Stand, being praised by The Guardian for an energetic performance and for her "tremendous stage presence" by The Daily Telegraph. In the autumn of 2014 she appeared in Rachel at the Finborough Theatre, and followed this by joining touring production of Kate Tempest's Hopelessly Devoted and three roles in Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) productions: Attendant in The Jew of Malta, Julia in Love's Sacrifice, and Assistant to Lady Politic Would-Be in Volpone. Walker's The Etienne Sisters, including songs by Atim, opened two days before the end of her run in Volpone.

Sheila Atim (born January 1991 in Uganda) is an actress, singer, composer, and playwright. She made her professional acting debut in 2013 at Shakespeare's Globe in The Lightning Child, a musical co-written by her acting teacher Ché Walker. Following critically-acclaimed stage roles including in the Donmar Warehouse's all-female Shakespeare trilogy in 2016, she won the 2018 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Musical for her role as Marianne Laine in the original production of Girl from the North Country. She has composed songs for productions, and in 2019 premiered her play Anguis at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. She has also been cast in television series, including the cancelled Game of Thrones successor series Bloodmoon and the BBC's The Pale Horse.

Sheila Atim was born in January 1991 in Uganda and moved to the UK with her mother at the age of five months. She grew up in Rainham, London and attended the Coopers' Company and Coborn School sixth form. Atim did some occasional modelling as a teenager, having been scouted after she shaved the side of her head for a school prom. Atim appeared in a 2009 London Fashion Week event called All Walks beyond the Catwalk that was organised by the British Fashion Council to showcase clothes that were for "real women." She later said "modelling was never a big earner for me. I was unusual looking, so I couldn't go for commercial castings."